here's mitt romney trying to figure out the meaning of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country you sir are a fool you know what that is my terrorist cell in your name that no one wishing to feature in the on the liberal and the christian public. can really go to the.

everyone i'm abby martin and this is breaking the set well it's been eleven long years since the nine eleven attacks indeed it was a tragic day in history and which three thousand world citizens died not to mention the countless that have died as a result of retaliatory u.s. policies abroad now more than a decade later one under reported tragedy is still unfolding the toxic dust from the towers were full of a special and other poisons that the e.p.a. said the air was safe to breathe and because of the fearless efforts of those workers who gave up everything to help hundreds of already died from cancer and hundreds more are dying now finally obama signed the zadroga act but it's been over a year and a half of waiting for those benefits to go into effect in the first responders are still waiting even though thousands are finally eligible to receive money there's been a delay over whether or not their cancers would be covered yesterday was determined

that fifty eight types of cancer would now be accepted and while i'm relieved that the heroes of nine eleven will finally receive health care the question i want to know remains why did it take so long for this to happen what about. those who have already died look no one should be used and abused by the system and if someone puts thousands of lives at risk for the sake of reopening wall street and getting americans to shop again they need to be held accountable and that's why i'm breaking the set i. i so it the political conventions finally over you would think that the corporate media would be playing catch up with all the real news they missed last week but in the mainstream tradition of distraction and diversion we got this instead. president obama being lifted up by a future owner in florida check this out. all right. and i knew it was coming and

he opened up the door and he was like worst yada and as soon as i saw him he came came came right at me for christmas shook my hand and i was just so excited i just gave him a big old pick tomatoes for easy and user is a registered republican in the south but he did vote for president obama in two thousand and eight and plans to do so again in november wow really i'm not even kidding even to day i'm still seeing news about this pizza guy picking up the president and they were even able to make this into a divisive issue between democrats and republicans simply simply amazing there but i digress there was definitely one story that's barely gotten any attention this week is the case of yet another inmate death at guantanamo bay another apparent suicide now there hasn't been a lot of information given out about the prisoner his name nationality it's all been withheld but there is plenty of speculation surrounding his death you see this anonymous prisoner is the ninth inmate to die on tunnel basins the prison opened in january two thousand and one and it's really upsetting to me that the corporate

media has been silent about this upsetting yes but shocking now i mean why would it be a big deal for the corporate press to report on yet another dead terrorist right. that's not the point the details of his death are what we should be most concerned with for example it's worth mentioning that one of the few data details that we do know about the deceased inmate is that he has not been charged with a crime and hadn't even been in line for prosecution i don't know call me crazy but this is not even the first death to occur on top of that would merit a full investigation by a medical examiner to determine the exact cause of death in april of last year a thirty seven year old afghan prisoner had also died of an apparent suicide now i specifically use the term apparent because in june of two thousand and six three other prisoners were also found dead the news release included that the three other prisoners appeared to have hanging themselves honestly i have a lot of questions regarding the united states continued use of the gone to prison

especially given the account of all these silly. a graduate student from bradley university in illinois who was supposedly dry boarded after was held captive by american authorities now you've probably heard of waterboarding but dry boarding is a technique that's described as having rags stuffed down one's throat and having the mouth and nose taped shut a practice that has not been ruled out as being the cause of the apparent suicides of three want on him obey inmates in two thousand and six apparently the only way to leave guantanamo is in a body bag but it's a good thing that president obama promised to close down guantanamo during his presidency and it's reassuring to know that the us doesn't torture people thank you america i can sleep better now. for the purpose of.

now eleven years on two very costly words later serve only as a reminder of the tragedy of nine eleven did we do enough are we in a better place now than we were before the attacks the age old question isn't it to help discuss this and more i'm joined by retired cia officer intelligence analyst ray mcgovern. thank you so much for joining me. so you are a former cia officer you've been you've you've served under multiple administrations i think seven and this all brings me back to the new york times article today talking about you know the infamous p.t.b. briefing to connally's the rise and that out of the terminal strike within the us and had so much controversy but was really interesting i wanted to poke a quote from this article re it says in other words the august sixth document for all the controversy it provoked is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it and it goes on to say operatives connected to bin laden one reported on june twenty ninth expected the plan near term attacks to have dramatic consequences

including major casualties on july first the breeze stated that the operation had been delayed but will soon occur yet the white house failed to take significant action ray as someone who was involved intimately in these intelligence briefings you know the intelligence apparatus in and out why why oh why did the u.s. or did the white house rather fail to take appropriate action in the face of all these threats they were told by the so-called neo con advice or not to pay attention to the cia but they didn't have the same priority several clinton people and so what we're really concerned about was. defense initiative missiles were decided about were excited about was energy you know there had been energy blackouts in california energy brownouts i was going to get more oil it was those kinds of things so they dismissed these reports and i can just understand how

terribly frustrated my old colleagues would have been having had this evidence starting well before september starting around april may june with their hair on fire trying to get the administration to do something when george bush famously got his briefing on in september the p.t.b. he said well ok now you've covered your rear end what else. you have to tell me he was very blah and he was told to be that way by cheney and the others but i mean bush was sleeping on an aircraft carrier i mean he was taking the threat seriously right i mean or do you are you saying that kind of thing yeah yeah i mean the threat was. he was taking it seriously enough to take for cautionary measures from self well not really here bush was in crawford you know during the entire months before the before the year attacked and when he heard the to osama was determined to strike in the us he went fishing literally so he was rather blah say about the whole thing and just as

a concrete indicator here on nine eleven. there was a week with nine eleven today so week before the lease arrives finally permitted the subject of osama bin laden to be discussed in a principal meeting you know this national security advisors ok one week the next week on nine eleven what was going to the soros intending to do make a big speech on the necessity for advance people stick missile defense how that could've protected us from terrorists is another question but she she dismissed all this because she was an on orders to not pay any attention to the cia so it was a blunder. unprecedented magnitude a blunder and we're paying the price ever since and bringing it back to you said the neo cons were kind of dismissing these clinton i officially as telling them you know pay attention to something obviously about to happen very seriously and i want

that brings me back to peanut project for a new american century where you have the neo con hawks signing on to this document that essentially says that absent a catalyzing catastrophic event like a new poll harbor they will not be able to implement their kind of global had your money in the entire world but ray i mean it kind of begs the question even though the neo cons are necessarily controlling policy we do see neo con heads sitting on these think tanks that provide foreign policy prescriptions that i don't know if they go into effect or not but i mean is this a larger thing and hand here it is indeed. back in my day when i was working for george bush the first and briefing him later with the p.t.p. president's daily brief we used to refer to the crazies you know they assume the name of neo con ok but they were the crazies and they were seen people wolfowitz perle most people george bush the first knew who they were and scowcroft and others

person jim baker his secretary of state said look for god's sake you can through these guys out because the republican party will go up in arms but keep them in places where they can't do any harm make sure that middle level is ok now when i saw george w. bush command and after him. not in middle level positions anymore but running a policy my god this is really serious and worse still look look at romney's staff of foreign policy they're all there chertoff from justice the fellow who had. the first american prisoner torture in afghanistan. people from cheney's staff people from. from wolfowitz is its staff and michael hayden the head of in a say who said when the president said would you please snoop on americans violated the first what they call it and he also didn't even know that probable cause was in the first fourth amendment doesn't play right and you know when the president said

look we would like you to monitor americans that's the first commandment at it as they are used to be thou shall not snoop on american citizens so this is all part of a larger i mean would you call it a global chess board this is a sort of these are a stripe of people who think that america american empire should be pursued by which you words such as afghanistan and iraq and god forbid iran that's a real real problem because the same people that are advocating war in iran are exactly the same people who escaped with impunity having advocated as in surely did for the war in iraq it's. bizarre it does seem like the foreign policy strategy has not really ended since the bush administration insists on high nose waving unfortunately have to wrap it up thank you so much for coming on and sharing your most road mcgovern analyst now if you like what you see so far go to our you tube channel at youtube dot com slash breaking the set and subscribe to our new facebook page facebook dot com slash breaking the set now i know the nature of the internet

is that hey there's going to be entrails i'm going to troll but if you're the more intelligent mind of feel free to always write me and let me know what you think and if you're wondering about what i'm doing or bitching about when i'm not on air follow me on twitter abby martin now let me take a break from my preaching for now but stay tuned for my post nine eleven world big brother watch next. wealthy british style. expert on the phone. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports . download the official

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but. now i would like to turn your attention to another issue or rather i should say a problem and ironically it's coming out of the very same country that we rashly decided to set foot in eleven years ago the opium trade many of you may know that afghanistan has always been a leader opium production and thereby heroin but what you may not know is that since the u.s. invasion in two thousand and one the cultivation of opium poppies has doubled not only has it doubled and now provides ninety percent of the entire world's heroin

supply if you talk to some u.s. foreign policy advisers they'll tell you that we're winning the drug war so long as we keep the troops but troops suppress drug cultivation in afghanistan or is their presence just a band-aid covering up and uncontainable problem joining us now to talk more about this and much more is for reba nawa afghan american journalist and author of opium nation child brides drug lords and one woman's journey through afghanistan thank you so much for joining us for the about now you were you me you were in afghanistan for instance from two thousand and two to two thousand and seven and you saw firsthand the u.s. their involvement with the afghans and the taliban before we went in that the taliban had almost eradicated the opium crop completely what was the breakdown and what was the u.s. doing to either help or not help the problem. the taliban had banned cultivation only and it was a political decision and a business decision it was to get recognized by the united states and the west

because only a few countries recognize them and business was down and supply was up and demand was down so banning it made it use the stockpiles it wasn't because they they were trying to ban opium they had the processing and the trafficking continued as far as how the u.s. handled it when they came in and they befriended the warlords and some other some of the taliban sympathizers who were in the business already and they looked the other way that was the pentagon's policy the pentagon the state department were at odds on how to deal with it. so therefore these drug lords were more empowered had more money and started to use the opium trade as a way to empower themselves by two thousand and eight two thousand and seven the opium crop was much more than it was under the taliban. so was processing two

thirds of the opium was processed into heroin inside the country whereas pretty tall of one time it was less so and talk a little bit more about the women the opium brides that you talk about your book talk a little bit about why is it such an unknown problem my goes to the rest of the world that this is happening it seems like afghanistan this element of the afghanistan wars kind of the forgotten war talk about the opium brides and why it is that no one really knows about the situation. i think there's so much news coming out of afghanistan but there are very few journalists who are actually especially american journalists who are actually going on the frontline of the poppy war it's very different then that it is connected of course but it's not about ideology or politics it's about business very similar to what's going on in mexico the girls are being bartered into marriage to settle opium debts their fathers fall into debt either they're farmers or middlemen or couriers who cross the border it's

a very high risk business one day you're a millionaire the next day you don't have money to eat what ends up happening when they go into debt with these big traffickers they sell their daughters young daughters they could either end up a second or third wives or they could be trafficked across the border and turned into prostitutes and it's happening more and more than it ever has before the practice of trading brides for money or blood money is not something new to the region but the level of it it is what is changed in the last ten years or so and the girl that i write about in opium nation was twelve years old she did not speak the language of the man that they had that her father had forced her to marry he was thirty four years old or had eight kids and a wife already and lived in a different province in the south she was from the west she threatened to burn herself to death and i went in search of her and that's essentially what the book focuses on. very emotional story and thank you for sharing your book is great and i

recommend everyone to grab it to learn more about this but i wanted to ask you i mean the global market of heroin right now is billion dollars karzai is a notable member of the heroin trade there and what you're looking at a war of resources you really can't deny that the black market of drugs is a giant massive wealth of resource for any country really seize upon i mean what do you think about the u.s. sustaining this war and really managing the opium trade do you think that this got . as a part of the afghanistan war that is going on it has become so since obama came into power the counter-narcotics strategy changed they stopped a forced eradication they started to focus on what they call turned up livelihoods or alternative crops and they started to target the big kingpins rather than the small smaller smugglers however there have been some success stories the problem is that in two thousand and fourteen the troops will leave this will change i think it

will there will be more opium there will be more opium if the taliban and when the taliban return they will they may even legalize that when i was reporting inside afghanistan i was told that in many parts of afghanistan before the two thousand ban they were the taliban were bringing in farmers from the south to teach farmers in the north and in the west how to cultivate poppy it was completely legal at every level until the two thousand bat and it was sudden because as i mentioned it was a business decision how the u.s. could maintain it they're not interested in maintaining it they're leaving in two thousand and fourteen but they also put signed a strategic pact to keep troops there till two thousand and twenty four and i mean we are fighting this global war on drugs it does seem kind of like an utter hypocrisy to allow kind of turn a blind eye to ninety percent of the world's production of heroin coming from the country that we're occupying. i think there needs to be more effort put into the

alternative livelihoods i think there needs to be more shelters for these young girls that are being trafficked across borders we need to focus on the reconstruction side we need to focus on the nation building side that hasn't been done and off the combat part is going to be finished as far as i know there are going to be focused on training and there will be a small number of troops fighting terrorism. but the. drug trade i don't know how that's going to be fought against now if this strategy is going to change if they're going to continue they don't have the number of troops now troops are now going on in the fields and talking to farmers there they're directly involved now but i'm not sure that's going to continue well let's let's hope that yeah let's hope that we do turn to actually building the country that we've bombed so much for the past decade plus thank you so much for joining us and giving thanks or take. thank you i.

i remember it was founded as a republic the constitution of the united states and the ten original amendments called the bill of rights were unique and completely revolutionary in the world ours was the first system that in shrine the people to govern themselves the type of government for the people by the people the bill of rights cemented our civil liberties and these are the rights that should never be threatened undermine or revoked but hey we live in a post nine eleven world now where we're told by politicians in an unquestioning media that we were quote that we were attacked because really greatest democracy and had the most freedom in the world but instead of preserving this bashing of freedom our government opportunistically seized upon nine eleven to systematically pass legislation that eroded our most fundamental freedoms our representatives argued that sacrifices would have to be made in order to protect us from terrorism

take a look. is anybody within mortar or there within that protection of liberty i think that what the usa patriot and all law enforcement activity does is try to protect our country as foundation of law and order a time when that security is missing in our world because of terrorism because of criminals unfortunately we may not always be able to tell you why that agent or agents are knocking on your door. and that is because of the nature of this investigation i hope that you would understand that if i'm going to compromise civil rights for national security is there a chance of some of your civil liberties may slip while we guarantee the security of this country maybe maybe. maybe sacrificing a liberty for security that doesn't sound like a good trade off and in fact one of the founding fathers of this country benjamin franklin once said he's sacrifices liberty for security deserve neither but let's

get back to what actually passed the first piece of legislation was now get ready for this doozy the united and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism act of two thousand and one then updated in two thousand and six better known as the usa patriot act and man orwell would be rolling in his grave if you can see the double speak coming from the establishment on this one because you see the patriot act is probably one of the most unpatriotic pieces of legislation ever passed since it overrode so many of our rights namely the first fourth fifth sixth eight and fourteenth amendments and members of congress only had seven hours to read the three hundred forty five page bill before voting on it. now the patriot act allowed unauthorized searches and seizures massive surveillance and access of all your personal information all under the guise of preventing terrorism and also why in the n.s.a.'s surveillance powers

but to worry i'm sure the n.s.a. officials understand that they need probable cause before they search people's homes right check out what michael hayden former director of the n.s.a. had to say about it. dating is that the fourth amendment of the constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate and americans right against unlawful speech is inserted as searches and seizures fourth amendment actually protect all of us against unreasonable search and seizure but that's what about the means has the measure is probable cause i believe the amendment says unreasonable search and seizure but does it not say probably the value it when they did a legal related will search and see the legal standard is probable cause actually it does say probable cause michael so you might want to read up on that constitution and the amendments oh but joy it looks like these top brass of these

agencies a lot of the protecting this country don't even have a grasp on basic civics that certainly makes me feel whole lot better so here let me break it down some more for you starting with the bush doctrine a phrase used to describe policy that basically said the u.s. has the right to preemptively invade a nation if they suspect that this nation may be a threat in the future this is ultimately used to justify the invasion of afghanistan so essentially the bush doctrine was a solid attempt to indoctrinate us into thinking that preemptive war is the right thing to do and it was foreign intelligence surveillance act it was originally instated to provide electronic surveillance for for intelligence that's loosely defined all it does pretty much is to provide justification to spy on pretty much. anyone and everyone and if you are all inspired by the coming together of people from the occupy wall street movement this year last year then you'll be very disheartened to know that bill h.r. three forty seven aka the federal restricted buildings and grounds improvement act

practically makes protesting their public officials a federal offense the closest thing we've seen a banning public protest thus far and most disturbingly the national defense authorization act which was signed by obama on new year's eve when america was literally drunk the bill not only loosely defines the word terrorist but also allows for the indefinite detention of american citizens without due process not having due process sets america back about eight centuries so here we are eleven years after nine eleven and i'm left with nothing but questions and face with nothing but hypocrisy the government told all of us that this was necessary to protect us from terrorism but if that were true why are they using all of this to terrorize us.

we. know news today violence has once again flared up. these are the images go for.